The rose-breasted grosbeaks have outwardly had a very good
summer thus far in our woods. Now some of the young are feeding
themselves and bathing regularly without coaxing from the adults.
Yesterday while photographing the activity at our platform
feeders I watched a young male vibrate his wings very vigorously
while "dad" shelled sunflower seeds nearby. Soon the
youngster was fed, but dad moved to the far side of the feeding
area.
Now I observed something that I had never seen before. The
baby male, apparently fully capable of shelling his own seeds,
continued to rapidly quiver his wings as he swallowed the seeds
he himself had hulled.
The rose-breasted grosbeak surely is an ideal bird to study
during its molting sequences. Bird banders classify birds seen
after the first of the year as at least "After Hatch
Year" or AHY. In other words, rose-breasted grosbeaks that
we see during May, June and early July, when the young are still
in the nest, are birds that were hatched last year or before.
They are all "AHY’s" or older. Knowing how the
plumage of this species changes with the various molts one can go
a step further in classifying these birds in spring. The flashy
rose-breasted males sporting black crowns, black wings and black
tails were hatched before last summer. They are at least
third-year birds or older. We call them
"After-Second-Year" birds, or ASY's.
The males that arrive here in spring sporting rosy breasts
along with brown crowns, brown wings, and brown tails are males
hatched last summer, or males in their second year. Our label
for them is "SY," meaning second-year bird. All males,
from the time they leave the nest, sport delicate pink under-wing
linings, usually concealed when the bird is at rest. The
under-wing linings of all of the females, from nestlings through
adults, are yellow.
Females, unless you can observe them very carefully after they
have left the nest, are very difficult to age. Being dark brown
on the back and tail, tan with streaks on their breasts, their
only real badges of femaleness are their yellow underwing
linings. Immature males, aside from their rosy underwing
linings, cannot be outwardly distinguished from the females,
regardless of the age of the females.
The few exceptions in aging females come immediately after
they have left the nest. They are innocently immaculate in
appearance. Feather edges are clean and very sharply defined as
opposed to the more ragged feather edges of the adult birds, and
their food begging tactics are give-aways. They’ve got to be
hatch-year birds, HY’s. Also, take a close look at the base of
their beak and you will notice that the fold of skin there,
between the upper and lower mandibles, is quite pinkish, a
feature found on most hatchlings immediately after leaving the
nest.
The adult male rose-breasted grosbeaks surely have a
far-reaching, rich and lilting song that is incredibly pure in
tone. It carries through the woods as soon as they arrive for
the summer and continues throughout much of the nesting period.
In fact the male is such an exuberant singer that he often sings
while taking his turn incubating the eggs.
A good vocalization to learn is that of the baby grosbeaks
upon leaving the nest and beginning to beg for food. It always
sounds to us as though the young birds are repeatedly saying,
"HEer, HEer, HEer."
Molting has already begun and is especially noticeable on the
second-year males. They are looking downright ragged now,
ungroomed, regular ragamuffins. Their breast feathers, while
still containing plenty of rose coloring, are beginning to show
tan edges and their brown wing and tail feathers are showing
plenty of wear.
The adult males, still sporting their regal black, white and
rose "suits" are now showing traces of tan on their
backs. They are slowly losing their trim and sharp breeding
plumage.
Regardless of how these grosbeaks differ in plumage, there
remains one undeniably strong characteristic common to all –
their bite! YIKES! They surely can bite! A person just can’t
have a total concept of rose-breasted grosbeaks until you have
held a live one in your hand and became careless enough to allow
it to grab onto your finger. What a shock! What an agonizing
vice-like grip, as though someone were pinching your finger with
a pair of pliers until it bled. Yes, they drew blood from my
fingers more than once during the 27 years that I banded birds!
All I can say is that the tortuous experience deepened my
admiration for so magnificent a creature. We surely are
fortunate that the rose-breasted grosbeaks are common nesters in
bmany woods of northeastern Wisconsin.
The nesting season is nearing an end and birds, such
as this rose-breasted grosbeak, will be more secluded as they molt all their
feathers.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 08/02/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
